Moral science has two halves. There are the implications of thinking straight about fact and value (ideal theory) and there are the implications of not thinking straight. Ideal theory is the foundation, error theory the daily battle.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Three terrorist memorializing features in the Flight 93 Memorial, all trivially easy to verify

If you are already familiar with this demonstration (hat tip blumerle), skip to the next heading. Newcomers, just notice that a person standing between the tips of the giant crescent and facing into the center of the crescent (red arrow) will be facing almost exactly at Mecca (the "qibla" direction, marked on Islam.com's green circle). It is so easy, even a reporter can do it. (Getting other newspapers to pass on this explosive revelation: so far impossible.)

A crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca is called a mihrab, and is the central feature around which every mosque is built. As unveiled in September 2005, the Crescent of Embrace would have been the world's largest mosque by a factor of a hundred. There are a dozen typical mosque features. All are realized in the Crescent design, all on the same epic scale as the giant mihrab. (See Crescent of Betrayal, especially download 2, Chapter Five.)

The insignificantly altered Bowl of Embrace redesign leaves every particle of structure from the original design fully intact. Not a single one of the twelve mosque features was altered in any way. The only change was to surround the original design with some irrelevant trees, slightly disguising the crescent structure, but a mosque is unaffected by how many trees are planted around it. The planned memorial will still be the world's largest mosque by a factor of a hundred.

The Crescent/Bowl of Embrace is no ordinary mosque. It is a terrorist memorial mosque, specifically honoring the hijackers of Flight 93. The purpose of this post is to show how trivially easy it is to verify the three main terrorist memorializing features in the crescent design. Figure 30 minutes to do it. Five minutes to read it.

Terrorist memorializing feature #1: the 9/11 date is placed in the exact position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag

Most crescent and star flags descend from the Ottoman flag, which has the star centered on the bisector of its crescent. In the Mecca orientation graphic above, you can see that the grove of trees that surrounds the Sacred Ground Plaza, down by the crash site, is centered a little bit below the center line of the giant crescent. The crescent bisector (red arrow) passes through about the top third of the Plaza.

Of course that made me curious whether there might be some feature within the upper third of the Plaza that is centered on the bisector of the giant crescent. All I had to do was open up the Sacred Ground PDF and look:

The Memorial Wall that is built along the flight path, just above the crash site, has a separate upper section marked: "wall with inscribed date." (You can think of "upper" here either as uphill, or as to the north, or as up the flight path from the crash site. All are to the right in the above graphic.)

The gap between the upper and lower sections of Memorial Wall is marked "trail." This trail is visible on the Mecca-orientation graphic:

The trail that passes between the upper and lower sections of Memorial wall can be seen coming in from the left. It meanders between the "23" and "P10" reference marks, then divides the Memorial Wall at the point marked by the yellow arrow.

Just by looking, one can see that the section of Memorial Wall that sits above the trail (the section that is inscribed with the 9/11 date) is centered on the bisector of the giant crescent. September 11, 2001 is to be placed exactly in the position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag. The date, it seems, is to go to the terrorists.

You can think that this is coincidence if you want (and if it were the only Islamic or terrorist memorializing feature in the design, that might even be plausible), but the starting point for any discussion of the significance of this placement has to be an acknowledgement that this placement is indeed a simple geometric fact, trivially easy to verify. You have already verified it just by looking. If you want to be a stickler, you can print out the above graphic and use a ruler and square to verify that the red arrow is actually the bisector of the giant crescent, or if you really want to be a stickler, start with the raw site plan, connect the most obtruding points of the crescent structure, and construct the perpendicular bisector yourself. If you want to get the original design PDFs from the horse's mouth, call the National Park Service curator at (814) 443-4557.

To Tom Burnett Sr. and myself, it is intolerable for the 9/11 date to be positioned as the star on an Islamic flag, whether or not it is by coincidence, and we think most Americans will agree.

Architect Paul Murdoch explains the crescent and star configuration of his design in terms of the path that Flight 93 followed to ground. The flight path breaks the circle, says Murdoch, turning it into a giant crescent. Thus the flight path enters the memorial at the upper crescent tip, then continues down to the Sacred Ground Plaza, where the two part Memorial Wall is built along the flight path, just above the crash site.

When Tom Burnett Sr. said he would not allow Tom Jr.'s name to be used in the memorial, reporters asked Paul Murdoch if there were really 44 glass blocks on the flight path, as I have been claiming. He acknowledged the 43 translucent panels in the two sections of Memorial Wall but denied knowing about any 44th glass block on the flight path:

...there are 40 inscribed marble panels listing the names of the passengers and crew at the gateway to the Sacred Ground, where their remains still rest.

There is then an opening in the wall, Mr. Murdoch said, and three additional panels, which would include the date, Sept. 11, 2001.

"Where the other one is being fabricated, I don't know," he said.

Yes he does. At the upper crescent tip, where the flight path breaks the circle in Paul Murdoch's explanation, sits a large glass block or panel that dedicates the entire site:

Oh THAT glass block! The 44th translucent panel on the flight path is at the end of the Entry Portal Walkway. It marks the spot where the 9/11 terrorists smashed our liberty loving circle, turning it into a giant Mecca oriented crescent. On this block will be carved the inscription: "... a field of honor forever."

Having used the flight path as an organizing principle for his design, Paul Murdoch is obviously well aware of the features that are built along it. His feigned ignorance of the Entry Portal walkway, where visitors first view the site, is a desperate attempt to avoid exposure. He knows that if the glass block count is verified, then all of my claims will be investigated and be found to be accurate, and his attempt to stab a terrorist memorial mosque into the heartland of America will fail.

Challenged by the father of one of our murdered heroes, the architect of the Flight 93 Memorial tells the baldest possible lie about his own design, feigning ignorance of the huge glass panel that marks the thematic creation of the crescent structure. If our news media would do its job and check the facts, Murdoch would have been immediately exposed as a liar, but the media has not yet reported this deception.

You can verify the translucent block count for yourself in two minutes. Just open up the Sacred Ground PDF and the Entry Portal PDF and count the inscribed translucent panels that are to be built along the flight path. Nothing in these PDF's was changed in the Bowl of Embrace redesign.

Mr. Burnett is asking the American people to take our warnings seriously. Paul Murdoch wants you to accept on faith his claim that there is nothing to see here. This one is a real no brainer. It reveals who's got no brains. Exhibit 1 is Tom Birdsong, editor of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

I learned from Post Gazette reporter Paula Ward that the editors of the Post Gazette knew about the Mecca-orientation of the Crescent of Embrace way back in September 2005, when the controversy over the crescent design first erupted, and made a top-level editorial decision not to publish it. (See Crescent of Betrayal, download 3, pp 108-10.) At the same time, the Post Gazette was calling critics of the crescent bigots. (Ibid.)

Birdsong's response to Mr. Burnett's plea that our warnings be taken seriously? A new editorial titled: "Efforts to sully Flight 93 memorial deserve scorn." As Paul Murdoch struggles to keep his hijacked airplane on course, Tom Birdsong will be blocking for him to the bitter end.

Terrorist memorializing feature #3: It points to the White House

Lines across the most obtruding tips of Paul Murdoch's crescent structures always have a meaningful orientation. Draw a line across the most obtruding tips of the vast array of crescents of trees that surround the Tower of Voices portion of the memorial (a year-round accurate Islamic prayer-time sundial), and it points in the exact same almost-exact Mecca direction as the giant central crescent (1.8 degrees north of Mecca).

Take an image of the Tower crescents with a blue line drawn across the most obtruding crescent tips, place it atop an image of the central crescent that has the crescent bisector superimposed in red, and without rotating either graphic, the result is a single purple line. With north at the top in both images, the two orientation lines match perfectly, proving that neither orientation is an accident.

There is one more giant crescent in the Crescent/Bowl of Embrace design: the crescent of radial arbors (the so called "Forty Memorial Groves," of which there are only 38) that sits asymmetrically on the back of the central crescent. Draw a line across the most obtruding tips of this fat rear crescent and see where it points:

The White House sits just about at the middle of the “i” in “Washington” on this Yahoo map. It is used here as the Washington end of the superimposed Shanksville-to-Washington line. Yahoo’s red star marks downtown Shanksville. The crash site is about three miles north and slightly east of downtown Shanksville, which according to Yahoo’s distance scale, puts it just to the right of the top of the star. A line through the White House and the crash-site (depicted) turns out to have the same slope as a line across the tips of Murdoch’s rear crescent (129° clockwise from north).

To continue the theme of this post: you can verify this orientation just by opening up the site plan PDF, measuring the angle across the fat rear crescent, and comparing it to the direction from the crash site to the White House as measured off of any map you please.

Now you know why the crescent of radial arbors (unchanged in the Bowl of Embrace redesign) is not symmetrical with the full Crescent of Embrace. It has a different job to perform. The full crescent gives the direction to Mecca. The rear crescent gives the direction to the target that the terrorists were trying to destroy. The full crescent is a mosque element (one of 12). The rear crescent is a terrorist-memorializing element (one of 3, or of 15, if you count the mosque elements as terrorist memorializing elements too, on account of the mosque being a terrorist memorial mosque).

One of architect Paul Murdoch’s repeated themes is inexact Islamic and terrorist memorializing geometries that contain hidden exact Islamic and terrorist memorializing geometries. The Sacred Ground Plaza, for example, is centered a little bit below the exact position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag, but there is a separate upper section of Memorial Wall, inscribed with the 9/11 date, that is in the exact position of the star on an Islamic flag.

Similarly with the inexact Mecca-orientation of the giant crescent (facing 1.8° north of Mecca). The design also contains a hidden exact Mecca orientation.

Recall the graphic of the Entry Portal Walkway passing through a gap in fifty foot tall Entry Portal Walls. Since the walkway (following the flight path) breaks the circle in Paul Murdoch's explanation (thereby turning the circle into a crescent), the fact that the Walkway passes through a gap in the Wall means that the Wall continues out beyond the point where the circle gets broken. It actually continues out for about another 125 feet.

That means that the conceptual crescent tip (where the circle gets broken) is 125 feet in from the most obtruding tip of the Crescent of Embrace design. It is not surprising, then, that the crescent defined by a line across the most obtruding tips of the crescent structure would not face exactly at Mecca. The real/hidden upper crescent tip is the one that Paul Murdoch describes. It is the point where the flight path breaks the circle, which Murdoch marks with the 44th glass block on the flight path.

Use the 44th block as the upper crescent tip, and the result is a crescent that is oriented exactly on Mecca, as precisely as can be determined by the pixel resolution of the graphics (i.e. ± about a tenth of a degree). See Crescent of Betrayal, download 2, Chapter Three.

Thus does Murdoch tie his central Mosque element (the Mecca oriented crescent) and his central terrorist memorializing element (the 44 translucent panels, strategically emplaced and inscribed along the flight path) into a perfect Bin Ladenist embrace.

Murdoch is an evil genius. Hate to have to tell you. Sure hope you pay attention.

The memorial should be a cross - perhaps laid flat into the ground rather than upright, and shaped so as to suggest also the shadow of an aeroplane.

On it there should be a plaque briefly stating what happened.

There should also be this text - which should surely be understood even by non-Christian families: "Greater love has no man than this, than that he lay down his life for his friends" (John 15: 13). If some of the non-Muslim passengers spoke a first language other than English, the text should be given in their languages also. If there were Jews among them, the text should be given in Hebrew, perhaps accompanied by the 'Shema Yisrael'.

In a great circle around the cross, let the families of every dead passenger (EXCEPT those of the hijackers) plant a long-lived tree in memory of their loved one, and at the foot of each tree place a stone with the person's name.

Those people on Flight 93, whether they were Christians, Hindus, Jews, or non-religious, died in the attempt to ensure that their plane would NOT be used as a bomb to kill their fellow citizens. Whether they took part directly in the fightback against the hijackers or not, they died so that others might live: they laid down their lives for their fellow citizens, for their neighbours, for their friends.

Interesting theory and conversation with Tom Burnett. I cannot seem to find the other finalist panels on the Flight 93 website, and also the Jury Report. I wonder why this is so since the other 9/11 memorial site have their finalist panels online. I wonder which of the other designs got the 6 votes. Maybe you could release that report so the public can get access to what they said? If there was another design that came close to the Crescent (maybe better) the public should know about it.

When you realize that the 9-11 attacks were carried out by the United States government, and that the "al-queda terrorists" were working for the CIA, then it will be no mystery whatsoever as to why the United States government is memorializing these attackers.

Why dont we continue the crescent of trees to form a complete circle and plant blue flowers in the field with a white flowers forming a star shape within the blue field.In the center of the white star would be a red marble 'dot' with the shape of the aircraft outlined on it facing away from Washington.Seen from above the memorial would resemble an early US Army Aircorp ensignia. The aircraft symbol would represent that our air heros had already turned the aircraft from Washington.

About Me

Here is a short bio I sent to press people covering the Flight 93 memorial debacle. My training is as an economist. I was in the PhD program in economics at Stanford until my research led me more towards moral theory and constitutional law, at which point I dropped the program and started working on my own. I was writing a book on republicanism (the system of liberty under law) for World Ahead Publishing when I discovered that the Flight 93 memorial was going to be a terrorist memorial mosque. World Ahead agreed to first publish my book about this rehijacking of Flight 93 (Crescent of Betrayal, temporarily available for free download at CrescentOfBetrayal.com). This is not my first venture into journalism. Over the years I have been a writer, opinions editor, and advisor for Stanford’s conservative campus newspaper The Stanford Review, and am currently on the Review’s board of directors.